The three women sat at the kitchen table and mostly didn’t talk.  They hadn’t known each other much when they ate together in the assisted living dining hall, so why start now, when it was apparent Gretta wouldn’t come back and she’d only had them over out of a desire to use the objects the grandson’s late wife had left behind in the kitchen.  A Kitchen Aide blender for pumpkin cupcakes with cream frosting, a non-stick pastry rolling pin for the crust of her cranberry tarts, napkin holders and place card holders, a lace tablecloth, linen placemats, a warmer for the tea, the cutest sugar bowl, a separate dish for each pat of butter, a ceramic honey-dip, a crumb scraper, a boxed set of LP records called Cocktail Piano Time, a pair of tongs for serving petit fours, a crystal vase for daisies, a porcelain vase for lilies, and of course, the full set of china. 
    Margo sat slumped in her wheelchair, Betty sat wearing her O-Two mask, and Gretta gleefully made use of all the utensils and dishes and she served and served.  She also got a good look at the two old women.  Betty breathed short quick breaths while Margo’s form slowly rose and fell.  Betty wore thick glasses and Margo went without, though neither could see well enough to make out detail.  Betty’s eyes were clear but glazed over while a thick yellow pus had accumulated in the corners of Margo’s eyes.  They wore polka-dot print dresses that covered their swollen bodies and they wore slippers like all the women at the assisted living home.  Margo’s gray mass of wild hair was pinned down while Betty’s thinning white do was combed over and straight.  Betty had dandruff on her shoulders.  Margot wore false teeth that rolled around in her mouth, seemingly a nervous habit.  Betty produced a pack of cigarettes in the middle of a course, with hardly anything eaten the entire afternoon, and the three women lit up, coughing and laughing.  The grandson walked through the kitchen not long after, imagining for a second that the women were getting high on his dope, until he got a good look at the factory-rolled Pall Malls.  There was decadence in the old birds yet.  And he left them to themselves again.
    Men are exhausting, Margo finally said.
    Amen to that, Betty said.
    Still, Gretta said.  There’s times for keeping one around.    
    She loved her tea cups.  They seemed shabbier now than when she first saw them, in Yugoslavia.  She’d wanted to go to Paris but the best Daddy could do was to spirit her away for a weekend to an East European industrial town that paid him for advice on a new glass plant, Daddy a glass factory engineer.  The town had charm and she remembered the name fondly for a time.  Then it left her and became, simply, their Yugoslavia trip.  She remembers being treated as important, being driven around town and every meal served with an exacting grace.  She knew for a fact there was royalty in her genealogy, and she adapted well to being pampered.  Her husband, Daddy, was glad that she was glad, and that they were staying alone in a hotel together.  She gave him her attention in the evening and spent the days being driven about town, her guide with a British accent and who seemed disappointed when she’d said she was tired of shopping.  She wanted to see the museum, the library, the cathedral.  Or she felt an obligation to see them.  But when she saw the teacups in a jeweler’s window, the history lessons came to an end.  The tea cups were hand-painted with gold leaf trim, with each cup and saucer the happiest single hue:  crimson, teal, sun-yellow, blood-orange, royal blue, and an ebony that also somehow managed to seem bright.  She kept the tea cups when her stash of things got smaller with each successive move, until she’d finally given them to the grandson’s new wife, who had just taken an interest in her life and often sat with her.  The grandson was always fond of the tea cups, though she hadn’t used them in decades, lining them up in a cupboard that was bought specifically for the displaying of the tea cups, an immense weighty object lugged from house to house for the sake of the lightest brightest and least useful curios of all.  And they weren’t glass.  And Daddy despised tea.  And she loved them. 
    Tears came to her eyes now as she drank from the petite sun-yellow tea cup, because it was the first time she’d gotten them out since Daddy’d died, and she regretted not using them more.  Neither Betty nor Margo noticed as she wiped her face with a linen napkin and neither listened as she told them the things she’d been reading, the far off towns she’d been visiting over the world wide web, and what it was like to live with a grandson who was the head of the household and all grown up with bad habits, a lazy demeanor, and a cynical outlook.   

John Minichillo writes and works in the Mid-South.  His work has appeared in Mississippi Review, Third Coast, the anthology Next Stop Hollywood (St. Martin's 2007), In Posse Review, and elsewhere. Forthcoming at Dogzplot and the Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction.

The irony hit Guy. Eighteen years a nondescript player, becoming an old baseball card in front of the denizens' backward turned caps, squinting along with them in the afternoon suns, tuning out their cacophony of boos following strikeouts and errors, and superstitiously changing his uniform number to 6 every third year. The same nonplussed rookie afraid to walk on the white lines, Guy was about to leave an indelible mark on the game, the game sealed in his tobacco juiced veins, only to be replaced by a younger, faster, precocious number 6.

Bruce Harris' fiction has appeared in The First Line, elimae, BULL, Pine Tree Mysteries, and Short, Fast, and Deadly. He enjoys relaxing with a Marxman.

 

 



 

Devoid of  the everyday traffic that frequented the park, and with no gates or fences to prevent their entry, they’d wandered into the city sanctuary after the time  posted signs advised it was closed.  Kaitlin pressed close to Kyle who clutched the brown, paper bag, not stopping until they found themselves in the playground.

The screw top snapped off and plastic cups filled, they slowly sipped.  They’d be leaving for school in two days, going in opposite directions.  Kaitlin experienced an overwhelming sadness at the prospect of their imminent separation.  Seated on the swings, they drank until the bottle was empty, Kyle turning it upside down, draining the last few drops.

“Let’s go,” he said.  Kaitlin reluctantly vacated her seat, following Kyle as he dropped the bottle, bag and glasses in a nearby trash can.  Voices drifted from the center of the park, signaling they were not alone in their late night tryst. 

Stumbling towards the lily pond, they shed their shoes and dangled their feet in the shallow water, eventually jumping in fully clothed, not concerned how they’d explain being drenched on a dry night when they finally made their way home.

“Come here,“ Kyle motioned Kaitlin towards him, and, locked in an embrace, they stood in the middle of the pond, oblivious to the world around them.  They’d become close over the summer, working together at the neighborhood frozen custard stand, Kaitlin amazed he‘d noticed her.

She shivered and he asked if she was cold.  “No,” she replied, her ear against his chest, listening to his beating heart.  She wished she could make the moment last forever. “I have to go,” she edged towards the low wall holding Kyle’s hand and stepping out, hoped her mother wouldn’t be waiting up, asking questions.

They walked towards the street, Kaitlin’s fingers tightening over Kyle’s until the outside world was visible.  Barricades stretched along the sidewalk ahead, and breaking free, Kyle raced up the hill, stopping to pick up a fallen branch.  “Hurry,” he called over his shoulder and as Kaitlin approached, he squatted along the walk.

“What are you doing?” she laughed, water dripping from her clothes, squeezing her feet back into her shoes, her heart pounding.

“Look,” he smiled up at her.  He’d etched their names in the drying cement of the newly poured walk, a testament to their love for all future foot traffic to witness.

Seeing their names, Kaitlin felt the significance of both beginning with the same consonant, thinking it must be an omen, signaling they were meant to be.

As he finished drawing the arrow going through the heart, the stick snapped causing the arrow to turn slightly at the tip, giving it the appearance of having broken in the process of piercing the heart.  A light flashed on in a window across the street, and dropping the stick, the pair raced away with the light.
  
“Do you think anyone saw us?” Kaitlin asked, stopping to catch her breath.

“Who cares?” Kyle laughed and ran across the lawn towards home, blissfully unaware the heart and names carved with a broken stick would remain long after their love had disappeared.

Janet Yung lives and writes in St. Louis.  Short fiction has appeared in several on-line publications including, “eMuse”, “Cynic On Line”, “Post Card Shorts”, “Shoots and Vines,” and “wtf pwm.”

So all night I keep having this dream where I’m lying next to Uncle Chester and I’m naked and fetal, facing Uncle C like a bare-assed John faces Yoko in that magazine picture, although thankfully I’m not draped over Uncle C like John is draped over Yoko. In the morning I stare at the ceiling thinking about this image and wishing I could talk to my wife Jenny about it, but it’s eight-thirty and it’s Saturday and that means my wife is out in the kitchen with Aunt Connie slicing sweet onions for our weekend omelets. What I would tell her if she were here is that unlike Yoko in the picture Uncle C’s eyes are not open. His skin does not look soft and warm. His fingers are gripping the edge of the comforter as if they’re locked in place, and the word that comes to mind is terrible, the word that comes to mind is rigid.
     Aunt and Uncle C are staying with us over the Independence Day holiday. They’re the parents I never had, raising my sister and me off and on while our actual parents consumed varying amounts of narcotics, divorced, met new life partners, rehabbed, took cubicle jobs, produced new families, etc. Aunt and Uncle C never had kids—Uncle C will tell you he shoots blanks, although I believe he’s covering for Aunt C—so you could say I’m like the child they never had. I say I because my sister ran away on her sixteenth birthday and went the way of our parents, a twenty-first century hippie, Goth style, meanwhile I dutifully moved ninety minutes west to take a position editing news copy, support the tax base, play coed softball, etc. Aunt and Uncle C come to visit several times a year, which my wife accepted graciously for the first year or so. 
     I use the bathroom and pad into the hallway. The door to the guest bedroom is closed. I listen for Uncle C’s chainsaw snoring, but there are only the soft sounds of the women chatting from the kitchen, the refrigerator door opening and closing, the running of water. Uncle C is an early riser; I’ve never beaten him to the breakfast table. I force myself to think positive thoughts: of his smiling green eyes that crinkle in the corners like crow’s prints and his glossy bare head, which he’ll rub with vigor. The man is in his early seventies, although to look at him you’d guess mid- to late fifties, tops. When I describe Uncle C to strangers I say Don Rickles, only heartier, and without the mean streak.
     I love the eclectic smell of omelets, although after today I may never eat another. I walk into the dining room, which is really just a modest open space along with the living room and kitchen, and take a seat staring at the undisturbed newspaper waiting for Uncle C’s scrutiny. He tends to read the stories aloud and offer his Libertarian-tinged feedback. “Legalize that crap and you’ll get rid of the problem,” he’ll conclude around a mouthful of egg. And: “What are we now, the world’s policeman?”
     I steal a look at Aunt C. She meets my gaze and looks away. Her arm quivers as she folds an omelet. Aunt C is tall and absurdly skinny, but she’s the boss, no doubt, with her polite intensity and her nineteen-fifties sensibilities. She dries my wife crazy, taking over the homestead the way she does, but that’s her whole life and I plead with Jenny to understand. Yes, Aunt C is a domestic know-it-all, but I think that’s just to cover up her insecurities. She made it only to tenth grade, a poor farm girl from Wyoming.
     I watch Jenny pull silverware from the drawer. She hasn’t caught the vibe. She comes from a prosperous, proper family. I know her parents were upset she married a copy editor who bites his nails and shrugs habitually, who moved their only child into a ranch house that looks an awful lot like a double-wide. Her family is CNN and crepes; mine is Cops and Cheez-Its.
     Jenny looks at me and says, “Breakfast is ready. Can you wake him up?”
     And I nod, steel myself the best I can and stand up, knowing that this will be one of the hardest things I’ll ever do, harder than asking Angie Stallis out on that first date, harder even than overcoming a severe fear of heights long enough to bungee-jump from a hundred-foot tower.
     It’s not that I have those dreams all the time or anything, and I couldn’t tell you what that naked Lennon thing was all about. But goddamn if it wasn’t real.
    “No,” says Aunt C, removing the pan from the burner. “I’ll get him.”
    She turns on stocking feet and heads toward the bedroom. My wife shoots me a puzzled look and I return one of those everything’s-all-right nods. Following Aunt C down the hall, I can tell by her posture that she’s holding her breath. She has forty-four years of history with this man. He’s her Big Lug; she’s his Olive Oil. They still do the yardwork in tandem, use a single hymnal at church, laugh together through reruns of Golden Girls. Without hesitating, Aunt C reaches out and opens the bedroom door and I realize that, for her, this is taking more courage than a hundred freefalls.
     “Darling?” she says.
     Aunt C walks into the room. She crawls up on the bed in slow, measured movements and drapes an arm and a leg over Uncle C, staring at the side of his face. Her housecoat rides up and I resist the urge to pull it down for her. Instead I climb up and place an arm over Aunt C, nuzzling my face against the back of her head and spreading my fingers over hers, over Uncle C’s heart. I feel her sigh, and sigh again. Eventually my wife appears at the door and looks us over. I motion for her to join us but she can only shake her head before turning to go and make the call, and I know suddenly that this is the end.

Andy's fiction has appeared online in The Legendary, Word Riot, Diddledog, Thieves Jargon and Pindeldyboz. He lives in a cold place with some other people and an animal.

He comes to me at night -- seeking that which I have.  His breath steaming and smelling of fine wine.  We speak no words, but his caresses tell me what I need to know.  I lie awake nightly listening to each creak for his footsteps.  Were he not of station and beholden to his father, our path would be different.  At first, I did not appreciate his affection.  I know now that our love was destined to be.  It still survives after these 12 years.
     Morning comes and I rise disappointed.  My bed is empty again.  I go downstairs.  There is much to do and Victoria is late.  She is often.  I remind her that breakfast must begin at six.  The master and mistress eat promptly at seven.  She nods; however, I know she does not care.  She is leisurely and even though I am unhappy with her performance, help is hard to find in these times.
     I feel a sense of excitement as I prepare the breakfast for serving.   Meals are the few times I can be certain to see him.  It is these moments I treasure – hearing his laugh, seeing him toss his hair.  I serve first the Master, then Mistress, then him, then the youngest son.  I steal glances at him, but do not look in his eyes and he does not acknowledge me.  His family must never know and I am committed to this.  I see Victoria pouring the juice quickly for the Master, Mistress and youngest son, but at Him, she smiles and pours slowly.  My breath catches in my throat.  I go quickly to her and tug her dress to move on.
     Back in the kitchen, I chastise her.  She insists it was innocent.  He smiled at her.  She smiled back.  I remind her of her place and that it was not to happen again. 
     It has been three weeks and Victoria's laziness is worsening.  She is insolent and arrogant.  I spoke to her this morning.
     "Victoria, you are to be in the kitchen by six o'clock.  I cannot endure these late mornings and continued laziness.  You must improve your performance or you will not keep this employ."
     "Esther, I'm sorry that you are bothered.  You will not have to worry about me in your employ much longer."
     “Have you sought other employment?"
     Victoria smiled at me.  I did not like it.  "I suppose you will know soon enough.  I will no longer be a servant in this house.  I will soon be a mistress here."
     I could get no breath and the sides of my eyes blurred.  "What are you saying?"  My voice was a whisper even to my own ears.
     In an excited schoolgirl voice, Victoria sang, "Phillip and I are in love.  He will be telling his father in a few days.  I will no longer have to work this drudgery."
     My anger rose as a windy storm.  How dare she speak his name.  He could not be in love with this ridiculous girl.  Victoria smirked and walked out to the garden.  I tried to remember when last he visited my room.  It had been less frequent as of late, but I presumed he was tired.  Now, I thought of those nights when I had been certain of his footsteps, only to be disappointed that he did not come.  Victoria's room was near my own.  It must be her youth.  He visited me often in my youth.  He could not love her for his heart was mine only.  Certainly there must be a reason.  She must have a threat on him that he is desperate to keep hidden.  I must know his will.
     I send Victoria to the market in Sommers.  It is a day's trip and she will not be back until tomorrow.  I lie in bed, waiting.  In the wee hours of twilight sleep, my door opens and it is him.  He is beautiful as always and comes to me boldly.  We are one through the night.  Laying in moonlight watching his slumber, I know what I must do.  He need not ask.  One must protect love at all costs.  He needs me and I am here for him.  He leaves at dawn with his still unspoken request resting upon me.
     Victoria returns from the market in the afternoon.  She is weary and I am kind.
"Victoria, had you something to eat today?"
     "I had a bit of croissant this morning."
     "You look a sight.  Go rest for a short time and I shall prepare you something to eat."
     I smiled at her surprise.  "Thank you, Esther."
     I nod and wait while she goes upstairs.  It is now that I walk to the gardener's shed. 
      "Mr. Tuttle?  May I have some arsenic?  Ants are in the kitchen again."
     "Certainly, Miss Frawn.  Ants you say?  I have not seen any around the garden in weeks."
     "Yes it is strange.  Please give me a large lot so I don't have to trouble you so frequently."
     "Very well."
     I continue to stir the soup.  I expect Victoria will like it.  The arsenic blends nicely with the butternut squash and yams.  I have made a large pot
     I know he will be relieved it is done.  It is a burden to be in his position with many responsibilities.  Soon, he will take over the family estate and he will be grateful that these girls were not absorbed into his family.  As I spoon the lovely soup into a bowl, I feel bad that the Master and Mistress will be disappointed that yet another girl has run away without notice.  But, while he has his responsibilities to the family, so do I.  This is my destiny.  I do what I must to protect him.  Climbing the stairs with my special meal, I remind myself, this is what one does for her soul mate when she is in love.

Ginger Cardinal resides in Ramona, California.